Probing Questions

I have recently moved into your area with the mission of planting a bible-believing church. I have taken it upon myself to become acquainted with other churches in the area to see if any are compatible with our rules of faith and practice and in line with our standards. To that end I hope you would not mind completing a short questionnaire so that we can determine if you are Fit for Fellowship™

Would you characterize your music program as only using old-fashioned sacred hymns or do you worship Satan? (Hymn / Satan circle one)

What percentage of time do your people spend each time in soulwinning and how do you keep them accountable to that number? _____________________________________ (be specific)

When was the last time that someone in your church got under the spout where the glory comes out? ______________ (Please list exact date and time)

Do you use any other version besides the KJV, January 1973 printed by Oxford University Press with black leather cover? _________________________________________________________ (If not, please explain why you hate Jesus).

Does any woman in your congregation ever wear pants when she thinks nobody can see her? Please explain how you have taken steps to prevent this. __________________________________________________

How many did you see gloriously saved last year? ______
How many were just plain old saved? _______
How many got baptized by immersion (regardless of how many times they did it previously)? __________
How many are currently on the mission field in some place that makes for good slide presentations? _____

Use the following space to include any details of charity, community outreach, and participation in interdenominational efforts __ (this space had better be blank).

Thanks for your time in completing these questions. If you have been judged Fit for Fellowship™ we’ll be in touch with you shortly with details of exactly when we want to use your gymnasium for our youth outings. If you are not judged Fit for Fellowship™ you’ll be hearing about yourself in my next Sunday’s sermon.

141 thoughts on “Probing Questions”

I looked up the name Jimmy B. Aufschneider on Google to see if this was a real person. And listed right at the top is Stuff Fundies Like. This post may have been up here for all of two minutes. Google sure is fast. 😀

As for the post itself, I fully believe someone would write this, after learning that they send out such forms to prospective missionaries asking what the wife wears to bed, nothing about these people surprises me anymore. 😥

The only reason I can figure is to determine if she wears pants or not. If they answer pajamas, eeeek! wrong answer! We can’t support missionaries who let their wives wear PANTS! The “correct” answer must be nightgown.

But how sad to be trying to raise money to get to the mission field, supposedly to win lost souls and feel you have to answer such a personal question so that the church will invite you to speak and perhaps at some future date take you on for support. If you left the question blank or answered “None of your business!” you would not be invited. 👿

How about responding to that letter with, “I’m sorry, but we cannot be associated with any church that asks such inappropriate questions. Your pastor clearly needs to repent of his lust and get his heart right with God.” Or “nothing” works too. 😆

That’s really a question asked of missionaries? Other than being a creeper, I can’t think of one good reason why that would be necessary to know. Even trying to think like a fundy, I can’t come up with one.

Having been a missionary on deputation, I can say that I have seen that question about what my wife wears to bed, as well as the other important doctrinal question of whether or not I would approve of mixed swimming. Seriously, its hilarious the length of a questionnaire that some of these podunk churches will come up with to consider supporting you for $25 per month.

My parents are missionaries, and have received numerous questionaires to fill out with questions similar to this. Other questions were: “What do you know about the game of poker?, Please list all of your heros, What do you think about pants on women?,” etc. These forms were usually sent after having been supported by a church for 5+ years as “check ups” to make sure that we still agreed with them on all the “important” issues (although these questions were never asked when you were first being taken on to be supported) and if an answer didn’t suit them, it gave them an excuse to drop their support.

Just google “missionary questionnaire.” Its not hard to find some crazy questions out there. Some of these people are just sick.

I know personally I was in a conundrum of sorts because I believed in what I was doing but despised the fundy theology/methodology. But once you are so vested in that way of life, its hard to stop and pick up your family and go to a “real” seminary and work with a denomination that has some sort of common sense.

I know, Todd. I did the same thing. I refreshed and refreshed thinking, “YAY! Today I have a chance.” Then I decided to go do a little laundry and of course by the time I got back, there it was with three comments already on there. 🙄

-Is the choir ever accompanied by any instument besides a black baby grand piano? ___ yes ___ no (if yes, please kneel on thy face and earnestly repent, then burn this letter and all previous coorespondance. Our family will remain separated from the evils of this world, dad-burnit.)

In my church growing up the LADIES in the choir wore choir robes because they could not be trusted to not dress in a distracting manner if they were not all wearing the robes, but the men wore white shirts and ties. (just like every other man in the building pretty much) Ahhh yes, the uniform of a Christian. “Put on the whole armor of God… The necktie of works… The shoes of soul winning… the choir robe of modesty.”

@ Seen Enough – the haircut comment is the funniest thing that I have read in weeks. I had to explain to my study hall students why I snorted out loud in class. They highly approved of your comment as well.

It perfectly epitomizes their black and white thinking: you either agree with them or you’re a Satan-following, Christ-rejecting reprobate. There’s no nuance, no gray areas, no flexibility; there’s also no grace and no Christian liberty.

Also it is so very fundie to stack the deck and poison the well when engaging others in conversation.
“You’re not going to hang out with those liberal Methodists are you?”
“Say you’re going on vacation? Make sure you don’t give Satan a toe hold, be in church on Sunday.”
“Are you going to honor the man-o-gawd or are you going to let Satan rule your life?”

Slightly off-topic, but you made me think of that liar Jack Hyles CONSTANTLY saying, “I will not use my people to build my work! I will use my work to build my people!” Even setting aside for the moment the colossal egotism of “MY WORK” and “MY PEOPLE,” he lied. That college’s dual purpose was to make him look important, and to build the church attendance of FBC Hammond. Now, forty years after its founding, it is a huge joke, even in some fundy circles. Yeah, it made him important, all right. In all the wrong ways. 👿

I guess the IFB church I was a member of for 20+ years was not FFF(TM, lol) since it is actively involved in community outreach/charity programs. In fact, their homeless outreach was pictured in a CCM Christmas video a year or so ago (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OExXItDyWEY). It isn’t the most active church in the community, but it does run a fair number of programs.

When I was on deputation I got many letters like this one. Being a bit of a wise-ass I had a hard time not answering them in an entertaining way.

I got one once that asked me to list the three sins I struggled with the most. My wife dared me to answer Drinkin’, Cussin’ and Cheatin’ but I just threw the thing away.

One asked me to list the titles of any books that I had read in the last three years. Once again, I threw it out.

One wanted to know if I had ever committed a crime and never been caught. (The mind boggles) File 13.

One asked if both me and my wife were virgins when we got married.

The general rule among missionaries is: If a pastor wants you to fill out a questionaire-he’s crazy. It might be a mild form of crazy that you can deal with but you really shouldn’t count on it.

Most of the forms were not very subtle ways for pastors to promote their KJV onlyism, Ruckmanism or Baptist Briderism. The very clear hint being that those who did not agree with them on their pet issue should not bother filling out the form. I usually didn’t.

I wish I had kept some of them now. When I exited The Ministry™ I threw away a lot of things that I wish I had kept.

Incredible. When my young husband was killed in a car wreck returning from making pastoral hospital visits, an old “friend” of his told me that “God had killed him” because of his wild youth. Uh, yeah. 👿

I am sorry to hear that someone could say something that insensitive and stupid. I do not know what it is like to lose a spouse but I am sure that is a devastating loss from which you never quite recover.

That is very kind. No, you never quite recover, in one sense, but there is healing. It will be 18 years soon, and I am hear to say, there was always abundant grace, mercy, love, and support from our incredible God. There still is. 🙂

Gary, darlin’, please. Poor young Charlie was not on any FBCHammond bus route, and therefore, we musn’t judge his poor misguided soul. Maybe one of these days, Rock of Ages will get up the guts to send one of their vacuum-cleaner salesmen his way. Until then, let’s not judge, mmm-kay?

Well, AOW and Gary, if it makes you feel any better, the clod who told me that was later fired from the ministry for seducing the young girls in his youth group. Sigh. Yet he has been allowed to live. Fundies. Their god is sure strange.

Nope, fundy as they come, but in the we-are-resentful-Jack-Hyles camp. This dolt’s scandal came out not long after the mass exodus from the Hyles camp, and this church is in that area, geographiclly, so his firing was a knee-jerk thing, IMO. Plus, there were some fathers out for his blood.

I always wondered if there were German language movements similar to KJVO, but never took the effort to investigate. I’m sure there’s some benighted group insisted the Lutherbibel ist noch das erhaltene Wort Gottes für sein Volk.

Sometimes I wonder if there are, say, Mayans who say you’ll be damned if you don’t read one particular Quiche translation, or Touvans who insist that all except one translation into Touvan are of the devil.

Saying only the original text in the original language is inspired (as many Muslims say about the Quran) makes sense (whether you agree or not, at least there’s a logic to it), but saying one translation is sacred? Where the **** do they get that??

The Dutch have the “statenvertaling” That’s the real true word of god. But most of the time they recognize the KJV is next-best though.
But I think it’s just hard to think that you’re the center of the universe when you live in a small country. I think Germany is the same.

This LOOKS like yet another in a very popular series of books by nearly the same name. HOWEVER, chapter two reveals all: the dragons are really sins and vices. Very doubtful, here, that the boys I know would do anything but throw the book away in disgust and bitter disappointment.

Some whre back in the archives or maybe it was in the forums we once had a link to a Missionary application form. I can’t find it now but it was pretty darn close to this. Anyone else remember it? *no Don, either you are making it up or you’re having a flashback.* I am not making it up, I promise… am I talking to myself? O…K….
😯

“Missionaries who have social networking accounts (ex; mySpace, Facebook, etc.) need not fill out the questionaire. We will not have missionaries in to present their ministry who are involved with social networking sites. Missionaries who do not practice what they preach need not fill out the questionaire.

A Payne, Pastor

(really.. you can’t make that up… ok his middle name starts with “W” but he is still A Payne)

you can find me at R/U on Friday night, telling them I have an addiction to stufffundieslike.com
I can resist anything but temptation. Like putting this on my facebook. oh well, who needs friends anyways.

This is hilarious, even to someone like me who does not have firsthand experience of this stuff.

I hope y’all won’t mind a slightly off-topic question. What are “old-fashioned sacred hymns”? I get that they are the antithesis of CCM — and yes, even as a Clueless Catholic, I do know what CCM is. 🙂 But…what sort of “old-fashioned” is it? Is it stuff like “In the Garden,” “The Old Rugged Cross,” and “How Great Thou Art”? (I must confess I could never stand that last one, as it is even more unsingable than the Star-Spangled Banner, unless you’re Leontyne Price.)

One reason I ask is that my family and I are big fans of some *really* old-fashioned American a capella hymnody called shape-note, a/k/a Sacred Harp. We used to belong to a local Sacred Harp singing group (not performers., just a bunch of folks sitting around and having fun singing). Oddly enough, most members of the group were aging hippies, mostly Quakers and Unitarians. There was one little Baptist lady, but we were the only Catholics. Before we arrived at our first “sing,” we thought we’d be be surrounded by Primitive Baptists who’d look askance at our Catholicism. Instead, we were surrounded by Quakers, lol.

Shape-note is kind of an acquired taste, but once you get the bug, you get it good, lol. It sounds kind of eerie and chant-like, and IMHO it’s a million times better than some of the sappier gospel hymns from the later 19th and earlier 20th centuries. (Most shape-note hymns and arrangements are pre-Civil War — at least the famous ones.)

Anyway, sorry to get off topic. Just wanted to say that I actually like some of that old-fashioned stuff — especially shaoe-note! — but I definitely don’t think one should be forcibly confined to just one style or era of hymnody. 🙂

They’re the old fashioned church hymns you’d find in a Baptist hymnal like “Soul Stirring Songs and Hymns” and “Great Hymns of the Faith” etc. Yes those three you mentioned are usually in them, along with “Victory in Jesus” “Are You Washed in the Blood?” and many others. I like these songs and enjoy them, though any song that is sung over and over and over becomes nauseating after a while. 🙄

I love all types of singing/music. I too, love the old hymns of the church, and it’s one of the hardest things for me to understand why someone would not think that great song writers of today can’t be touched to write wonderful hymns/songs now, did God stop inspiring folks to write songs when Fanny Crosby penned her last one? This does vary somewhat throughout fundydom, with some fundies decrying wicked southern gospel, while others, particularly down south love the southern gospel. I like some of all of it, as long as it uplifts the Lord!

Greg, at the risk of going totally off-topic (sorry!!), here is the trailer to “Awake My Soul: The Story of the Sacred Harp,” a **wonderful** documentary about this almost-lost (but now rediscovered!) hymnody:

For my money, the best church hymnal EVAH is the 1940 Episcopal Hymnal. Them Piskies can sing the pants off of everyone else in Christendom. But something tells that hymnal (which literally has something for everyone) would not be much appreciated in IFB circles.

BTW…sorry to get back onto the music thing, but at last this is on-topic, kinda-sorta:

If these folks are so keen on “old-fashioned hymns,” why do they stop with stuff that was composed in the late 19th and early 20th centuries? Why not go back to something even more primitive — such as shape-note hymns, which mostly come from the early 19th century? Or the colonial hymnody of William Billings? Heck, why stop there? Why not go back to Bach? Or Palestrina? Or to Gregorian chant? Or to Byzantine chant, for that matter?

Of course, I do know the answer to these questions. 😉 But the grand irony is that the hymns these folks favor are not all *that* “old-fashioned.” Given the 2,000-year history of Christianity, these hymns are actually relatively modern.

When Fundies catch up with early-21st-century technology, they may demand that missionaries place 24-hour webcams in their bedrooms, to make sure they are wearing the proper bedroom attire, using none but the Missionary Position, etc.